With more than 840 million active Facebook users and an Alexa ranking of 2, Virtual Assistants should surely consider using Facebook to establish a unique business footprint.
Here are 6 ways Facebook can benefit your Virtual Assistant business:
1. Increase Visibility – Facebook can be a great resource for generating visibility. If people don’t know about you, how will they work with you? But as you expand your network on Facebook and more people become connected with you, you become more visible and increase the chances to attract new clients. Read more »
Online Marketing is growing rapidly and getting your Virtual Assistant business out there is important to enable you to attract visitors to your website, which in turn should ideally lead to new clients and increased revenues.
So here are 5 online marketing tools to help you get more clients. Read more »
Different people may have different answers on what the absolute FIRST thing is you need to do when starting a Virtual Assistant business – and all of them can be right.
In my opinion however, the absolute first thing you MUST do before you start your business is to really understand YOU.
We all like to think we know ourselves really well but I sometimes wonder if that is true. It’s like in the analogy from the movie Shrek, where Shrek talked to Donkey and said
Shrek: For your information, there’s a lot more to ogres than people think.
Donkey: Example?
Shrek: Example… uh… ogres are like onions!
Donkey: They stink?
Shrek: Yes… No!
Donkey: Oh, they make you cry?
Shrek: NO! Layers! Onions have layers. Ogres have layers. Onions have layers. You get it? We both have layers.
Like ogres, there’s a lot more to you than meets the eye. You have layers!
How well do you know your layers? How well do you know: Read more »
When it comes to taking the leap from employee to full-time Virtual Assistant, do you follow your heart, your gut or your money?
This is often a very tough decision.
For many aspiring VAs, it seems like the “safest” option to follow the money – to start a virtual assistance business part-time.
There is nothing wrong with the approach of starting a VA business part-time. In-fact (in some instances) I even recommend it, especially if you are the sole breadwinner – you first need to live and pay the bills. But there are some underlying pitfalls to be aware off, especially if you want to keep your full-time job as sort of a “backup plan” should things not work out with Virtual Assistance.
Having a back-up plan is good, but it often originates from thinking about how “NOT TO LOSE”. It dilutes the focus, because subconsciously if something goes wrong with your new business, you feel you can always fall back on you current career. Unfortunately, with this mind-set of “how not to lose”, many part-time VAs struggle to survive because… Read more »
Starting a business as a solo-preneur has loads of benefits. One of the biggest benefits is you are the boss and responsible for how you do things. This can however also be one the biggest drawbacks because of the mere fact that as a solo-entrepreneur you wear so many different hats. You are the:
- CEO – doing business planning and creating an overall strategy
- Marketing manager –finding clients
- Operations manager - doing client work
- Financial manager – handling income and expenses
- Secretary – scheduling client appointments
- Admin assistant – getting your own processes and procedures in place and handling your own admin
Although all these roles/activities are required to ensure the smooth running of your business, they are not all equally important. Read more »
This is a really tough question to answer since it depends on a lot of different factors, but here are some of the things I learned from experience that help bring in money faster.
1. Marketing is the most important activity in your business. Making money does not happen automatically – even if you are excellent in what you do, have the nicest personality and deliver the best services possible. It also doesn’t help much to sit behind a computer and wonder where your next clients or your income will come from. You need to step out and market your business daily.
Marketing is one of the areas that take most people out of their comfort zones – but it is necessary – because marketing enables you to share your talents and skills with the world. Don’t be afraid to talk to people or to meet new people regularly. Become comfortable telling them about your business and what you offer. Do it in such a way that they understand how you can help them. I’ve learned that marketing and earning more money becomes much easier when Read more »
In a previous post, I talked about valid reasons and some benefits of working from home as a Virtual Assistant. Things such as: walking to your office in less than 1 minute, working in your pajamas, having flexible work hours and control over your live.
For me, working as a services professional for the past 5 years, the benefits of working at home far outweigh the concerns and I cannot imagine ever going back to a corporate office again.
However, there are also a couple of things that are not as glamorous. There are many challenges that you have to deal with on a daily basis working as a Virtual Assistant. So, here is a list of some of the top challenges and some ways to solve each. Read more »
Virtual Assistance is spreading across the world and has become widely recognized as one of the most desirable businesses to start from home.
There are many reasons that motivate and inspire people to take action. Here’s just a snapshot of some of the more logical and somewhat crazy (but valid) reasons for becoming a Virtual Assistant. Read more »
The Online International Virtual Assistants Convention, known for its revolutionary presentations and its flair for new and improved events, “kicks off” its 7th Annual Convention on May 17 – 19.
In conjunction with the kick-off, the OIVAC will be running a St. Patrick’s Day Special Event price for anyone who registers for OIVAC sessions and presentations between March 17 and March 24.
Payment options are as follows: Read more »
Selling is NOT bad!
But personally, I feel much more comfortable when I can take most of the bad selling out of the equation and rather include strategies for good selling – strategies where I don’t push and harass people to work with me, but rather pull and attract prospects and let them make the decision to work with me.
The difference is:
- With push marketing strategies you try so hard to convince potential clients to work with you.
- With pull marketing strategies, prospects often have to convince you to work with them.
So, pull marketing strategies turn the tables and make selling so much fun!
An authentic pull marketing strategy starts with the following basics: Read more »
VA Marketing | Francis, 16 May 12 | 
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